On An Overgrown Path

'On stage I have always been surrounded by French and Gypsy musicians as well as musicians from the Eastern nations - because this mix is my universe, my world and it is the only thing which brings me the stability I need in order to live and to survive, like the balance that is found in the bosom of a large and closely-knit family. Among us there are no castes and when the time comes for singing and breaking bread, the time for dancing, the people becomes king'. As my seventh year of blogging approaches I find myself less and less interested in rumours about the next career move of a jet set conductor or the latest hyperbole lavished by the twittering classes on last night's BBC Prom. Which is just fine; celebrity classical music is well served elsewhere leaving me to find sustenance where the people rather than personalities are king. Which brings me to the musician who supplied my opening quote. Titi Robin, seen in my first two photos with 'the gypsy queen of Ra...

On stage I have always been surrounded by French and Gypsy musicians as well as musicians from the Eastern nations - because this mix is my universe, my world and it is the only thing which brings me the stability I need in order to live and to survive, like the balance that is found in the bosom of a large and closely-knit family. Among us there are no castes and when the time comes for singing and breaking bread, the time for dancing, the people becomes king'. As my seventh year of blogging approaches I find myself less and less interested in rumours about the next career move of a jet set conductor or the latest hyperbole lavished by the twittering classes on last night's BBC Prom . Which is just fine; celebrity classical music is well served elsewhere leaving me to find sustenance where people rather than personalities are what really matters. Which brings me to the musician who supplied my opening quote. Titi Robin, seen in my first two photos with 'the gypsy quee...

I have never felt comfortable with the economic, social and cultural order that reigns over the field of ‘world music’, that makes Western artists travel to countries in the East and the South that possess rich musical traditions. They collect music, repertories and musicians from there and return to fructify this godsend in the privileged world of the well-off West, where the art market is structured in a sufficiently rational manner to allow musicians to develop their careers and live off their art. None of us find this strange. The audience in those countries rarely have the opportunity to judge the results of our work as it is almost unavailable to them. Perhaps the time has come to reverse this trend. In any case, I feel the need to do so in order to preserve the coherence and balance of my own journey as an artist and as a human being. Yesterday I asked "Could [the mass market fallacy] also explain why creativity continues to flourish in genres such as world music and jazz...

The old concierge in an apartment building where an American writer and his wife lived had said it best. "That type, they want everything, men and women from the common people, young ones, healthy, preferably from the countryside, who can't read or write, serving them all day, then servicing them at night. A package deal, and between two pokes, tokes on a nicely packed pipe of kif to help the American write! Tell me your story, he says to them. I'll make a novel out of it, you'll even have your name on the cover: you won't be able to read it but no matter, you're a writer like me, except that you're an illiterate writer, that's exotic - what I mean is, unusual, my friend! That's what he tells them, without ever mentioning money, because you don't talk about that, not when you're working for a writer, after all! They aren't obliged to accept, but I know that poverty - our friend poverty - can lead us to some very sad places..." That...

Eleven years ago while browsing in the wonderful bookshop Librairie La Friche in Paris' 11th arrondissement I chanced upon a CD by a musician I had never heard of. It was Titi Robin's collaboration with Pakistani qawwali singer Faiz Ali Faizi Jaadu (Magic) , which celebrates the universal message of Sufism . Since then that discovery has taken me down an overgrown path to further explore mystical Islam and to hear Titi and Faiz Ali Faizi perform in concerts , which led to an online friendship with Titi, an enlightened being who has chosen the musical road not taken Born in the Loire region of France in 1957, Titi Robin cites the Iraqi oud player Munir Bachir and flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla as early influences. But he chose to follow his own road, rather than following that prescribed by corporate world music. He explains 'I have never felt comfortable with the economic, social and cultural order that reigns over the field of ‘world music’... which colle...

Most Sufis believe that the great religions and mystical traditions of the world share the same essential Truth. The various prophets and spiritual teachers are like the light bulbs that illuminate a room. The bulbs are different, but the current comes from one source, which is God. It is the same light; each of the individual bulbs receives electricity from a single source. The quality of the light is always basically the same, and so is the original source - from Essential Sufism . Although Sufism is technically an esoteric branch of Islam it has also fascinated great minds from other cultures including the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton . My header photo shows Titi Robin (right) and Faiz Ali Faiz (left) whose new album Jaadu Magic sets Sufi poetry. Faiz Ali Faiz was born in Pakistan and trained in Qawwali , a form of Sufi devotional music. Titi (Thierry) Robin is a French gypsy guitarist whose biography says - ...has explored various streams following his destiny East, through...

This is the artwork for the forthcoming Decca CD from L'Abbaye de Notre-Dame de l'Annonciation du Barroux with added ornaments to reflect the topical playlist for my Chance Music programme on Sunday, August 1. 1. Titi Robin - Kali Sultana, troisième mouvement 2. Lady Gaga - Poker Face 3. Monks of l'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux - Gregorian antiphons and responsories 4. Bells of l'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux 5. Xavier de Fourvière, Te Saludan - Jean Coutarel (organ) and Jean-Sébastien Bressy (galoubet) 6. Jonathan Harvey , Mortuos plango, vivos voce for eight channel tape 7. Titi Robin - Kali Sultana, septième mouvement and épilogue Titi Robin's daughter features on vocals on the opening track. My daughter will be talking about the Lady Gaga track as she was at the diva's O2 gig in London a few months ago and, I have to confess, I wasn't. But is it art or entertainment , or is it just quick and dirty media ? Does it matter? As broadcaster a...

With both Pope Francis and Alex Ross quoting the ninth century Sufi mystic Ali al-Khawas in the same week, we can safely assume that Sufism has finally hit the big time. My photo shows the darîh (shrine) of the Sufi marabout (saint) Sidi Moussa at Aglou on the Atlantic coast in southern Morocco. This is the western fringe of Islam, and Sufism absorbs local cultures as it travels. The animistic practices absorbed by the mystical brotherhood from Jajouka in the north of Morocco and the gnawa from the sub-Saharan south are examples of this adaption. Aglou is Berber country, and the Berbers mix observance of saintly and animistic cults with more orthodox Islam in a syncretic tradition known as Maraboutic Islam. This finds expression in the region's music, most notably among the Gnawa who blend their sub-Saharan origins with Berber and Sufi influences. I took the header photo during my recent travels in Morocco, and the new album Taziri from Mehdi Nassouli and Titi Robin w...

Among Indian musical instruments the short-necked fiddle known as a sarangi is the Cinderella. Because it was closely associated with popular folk music the sarangi fell out of favour at the turn of the last century, and the harmonium and violin began to replace it in classical performances. Later, the flowering of Indian music in the West was led by the sitar, which shares with the now-ubiquitous Malian kora a beguiling mellifluousness. By contrast the sarangi closely approximates the Indian classical vocal style , and is therefore more challenging to Western ears. Despite its eclipse and relative inaccessibility to Western ears there are many distinguished sarangi masters, and my recent listening has included Indian recordings of ragas played by Ustad Sultan Khan with his longtime accompanist tabla virtuoso sans frontières Zakir Hussain . Overgrown paths converge here as Zakir Hussain was a member of John McLaughlin's Shakti , a band featured in another post sparke...

When the Europeans introduced electric lighting into newly occupied Tangier, a shaykh remarked: 'If these people were obliged to pray five times a day, they would have no time for childishness!' There is more in this observation than meets the eye. That pithy observation comes from Titus Burckhardt's inspirational book Fez, City of Islam . Among the works performed in recent years at the Fez sacred music festival have been Jordi Savall's Jerusalem and Abed Azrié's Gospel of John . I took the photo above in Morocco, but not in Tangier or Fez; it is the souk in Essaouira at the time of jum'ah , the Friday midday prayer that is obligatory for all male adult Muslims. French gypsy musician Titi Robin, 'among us there are no castes' , played at the 2010 Essaouira Gnawa festival to rave reviews . The adhān, the Islamic call to prayer, features in Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov's ...hold me, neighbour, in this storm... on the Kronos Quatet's F...

Macedonian Romani musician and humanitarian Esma Redzepova is seen here with French gypsy guitarist Titi Robin. The photo comes from the 2007 Accords Croisés album Esma - My Story which combines new recordings and archive tracks in an invaluable musical portrait of the Balkan 'queen of the gypsies'. Born in 1943 in Skopje, Yugoslavia Esma Redzepova Teodosievska has combined a very successful musical career with extensive humanitarian work and has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize . Most Roma have converted to the religions of the countries in which they now live, but their formal religious affiliation is often supplemented by traditional Roma beliefs. When the Roma arrived in Europe in the 15th century they brought with them the tradition of worshipping the Goddess Kali and this still finds expression in the annual gypsy pilgrimage to Les Saintes Maries de la Mer in France. Titi Robin's unique brand of syncretic music develops this theme in his concept alb...

'BBC Proms unveils celebration of global classical music for 2014' declares the BBC press release accompanying the infamous 'Madame Tussauds' photo of Sakari Oramo. Which is not quite true: in fact the 2014 Proms are an admirable celebration of Western classical music. Yes, there are orchestras from beyond the Western hemisphere such as the Qatar Philharmonic and the Singapore Symphony ; but they are playing Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov spiced with compositions from local composers written in the Western classical tradition. Now let's make it quite clear; I am not advocating turning the Proms into a world music festival. But that headline does reflect the colonial attitude that guitarist, composer and improviser Titi Robin sees as still prevailing in the music industry. Titi Robin recorded the Moroccan disc of his revelatory Riverbanks trilogy in Agadir. Among the guest artists are the Berber tamawayt singer Cherifa Kersit, who featured in a 2011 post th...

But the storm of cries over the city reassured me. It made the single human voice, particularly the one inside one’s head, sound petty and unimportant. Meanwhile, the universal, stereophonic sound, bouncing from one side of the valley to the other, constricted space. It made the towering escarpments that surrounded the city seem to loom and drape, as if they had picked up and advanced a little bit during the day while the citizens napped and chewed their qat . That evocation of the Muslim call to prayer by the muezzin comes from a new book by Theo Padnos . It introduces a post which both celebrates the start of Ramadan and offers an alternative to Big Music's upcoming multicultural media fest at the BBC Proms . I recently described Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras’ new Jeanne d’Arc – Batailles & Prisons as being more audio verité than music CD , and that description also applies to the disc seen above. Almuédano is an atmospheric portrayal of the adhān, the call to pr...